Wood-Block Printing | Page 5

impossible to obtain the best results
by that means, but the cutting of the colour-blocks and the clearing of
the key-block after the first cutting of the line may well be done by
assistant craftsmen.
A larger demand for the prints might bring about a commercial

development of the work, and the consequent employment of trained
craftsmen or craftswomen, but the result would be a different one from
that which has been obtained by the artists who are willing to undertake
the whole production of their work.
The actual value of wood-block prints for use as decoration is a matter
of personal taste and experience.
In my own opinion there is an element that always remains foreign in
the prints of the Japanese masters, yet I know of no other kind of art
that has the same telling value on a wall, or the same decorative charm
in modern domestic rooms as the wood-block print. A single print well
placed in a room of quiet colour will enrich and dominate a whole wall.
The modern vogue still favours more expensive although less
decorative forms of art, or works of reproduction without colour, yet
here is an art available to all who care for expressive design and colour,
and within the means of the large public to whom the cost of pictures is
prohibitive. In its possibility as a decorative means of expression well
suited to our modern needs and uses, and in the particular charm that
colour has when printed from wood on a paper that is beautiful already
by its own quality, there is no doubt of the scope and opportunity
offered by this art.
But as with new wine and old bottles, a new condition of simplicity in
furniture and of pure colour in decoration must first be established. A
wood-block print will not tell well amid a wilderness of bric-à-brac or
on a gaudy wall-paper.
From another and quite different point of view, the art of block-cutting
and colour-printing has, however, a special and important value. To any
student of pictorial art, especially to any who may wish to design for
modern printed decoration, no work gives such instruction in economy
of design, in the resources of line and its expressive development, and
in the use and behaviour of colour. This has been the expressed opinion
of many who have undertaken a course of wood-block printing for this
object alone.

The same opinion is emphatically stated by Professor Emil Orlik,
whose prints are well known in modern exhibitions. On the occasion of
a visit to the Kunstgewerbeschule of Berlin, I found him conducting a
class for designers for printed decoration, in which the Japanese craft of
block-printing was made the basis of their training. He held to the view
that the primitive craft teaches the students the very economy and
simplicity upon which the successful use of the great modern resources
of colour-printing depend, yet which cannot be learnt except by
recourse to simpler conditions and more narrow limitations before
dealing with the greater scope of the machine.
My own experience also convinces me that whatever may be the
ultimate value of the Eastern craft to our artists as a mode of personal
expression, there is no doubt of its effect and usefulness in training
students to design with economy and simplicity for modern printing
processes.
CHAPTER II
General Description of the Operation of Printing from a Set of Blocks
The early stages of any craft are more interesting when we are familiar
with the final result. For this reason it is often an advantage to begin at
the end.
To see a few impressions taken from a set of blocks in colour printing,
or to print them oneself, gives the best possible idea of the quality and
essential character of print-making. So also in describing the work it
will perhaps tend to make the various stages clearer if the final act of
printing is first explained.
The most striking characteristic of this craft is the primitive simplicity
of the act of printing. No press is required, and no machinery.
A block is laid flat on the table with its cut surface uppermost, and is
kept steady by a small wad of damp paper placed under each corner. A
pile of paper slightly damped ready for printing lies within reach just
beyond the wood-block, so that the printer may easily lift the paper

sheet by sheet on to the block as it is required.
It is the practice in Japan to work squatting on the floor, with the blocks
and tools also on the floor in front of the craftsman. Our own habit of
working at a table is less simple, but has some advantages. One practice
or habit of the Japanese is, however, to be followed with particular care.